5 tips for taking pictures at the beach

Buffie Boily's best advice for taking pictures at the beach? Don't take pictures at the beach.

Wind, sand, saltwater and expensive camera gear is not a good mix.

But let's be realistic. People are going to take pictures at the beach Boily, a professional photographer, included.

So resigned to that fact, here are some of her top tips for taking pictures at the beach.

Keep it clean

"If you can avoid changing your lens at the beach, you probably should because that whole 'crunch', it's a terrible sound because you know something's breaking. If you have to replace something, make sure if you are changing lenses or putting in new memory cards do it with as clean a hands as possible. So you don't have sand on your hands or arms or sunscreen on your hands, because that all over the rubber grips on your camera, that is just going to cause havoc.

Give them a flash

Just because it's bright and sunny doesn't mean you don't need your flash, Boily said.

"When the sun is out, a lot of people are like, 'oh, it's so sunny I don't need a flash.' Well sometimes a sunny day is when you need your flash the most."

People wearing hats, for example, could have their face or nose in a shadow. Or if the sun was behind them, their faces could be dark.

"You're going to need your flash to fill in that shadow," she said.

Capture textures when the sun is low

The beach is full of textures rocks, sand, trees, driftwood, wildflowers. It's trickier to capture textures in the flat, mid-day sun, she said.

"If you're looking specifically to get textures, the lower the light in the sky, the more texture you're going to see because it's going to create shadows on maybe those rocks, or that sand or on that piece of driftwood."

Print your images

Posting pictures of your day at the beach on Facebook and Instagram is all well and good, but once they get past your news feed, they're gone and forgotten.

That would be a shame, Boily says.

"I'm sure all of us have gone to our mothers and looked through the photo albums. Well that's not going to happen now because you're not really preserving them for your kids and grandkids. To say, 'oh my God, look at my mom at the beach in 2016!'"

You don't want to deprive them of that, now do you?

The secret's out

You can't go wrong at any beach on the Island, Boily says, but her personal favouriteis Yankee Hill Beach near French River.

"I've never been there with more than 10 people," she said.